Donna Leon - Doctored Evidence

'And then afterwards, Signorina, what happened when you went to the banks to try to get it?' Brunetti asked.

'The people at the banks – I knew them all -told me that the accounts had been closed.'

'And why did you think Avvocatessa Marieschi took it?' he asked, introducing the name for the first time.

'Because Zia Maria told me she was the only other person who knew about the money. And that I could trust her.' She said this with audible disgust. 'Who else could it be?'

Brunetti looked across at the silent Vianello and raised his chin in interrogation. Vianello closed his eyes for a moment and shook his head: that was it; there was nothing else to be learned from her.

Brunetti didn't bother to say anything to her but turned away and started towards the door.

Behind him, however, he heard Vianello's voice. 'Why did you kill the dog, Signorina?' Brunetti stopped but didn't turn around.

Such a long time passed that anyone but the stolid Vianello would have abandoned the wait and left. Finally, consonants wetter than ever, she spat out, 'Because people love dogs.' After a short pause, Brunetti heard Vianello's steps behind him and he continued walking towards the door to the shop.

'Well’ Brunetti asked as they stepped out into Calle Lunga San Barnaba, 'what did you think?'

'I'd say she's what my kids are being taught at school to call "differently abled".'

'Retarded, you mean?' Brunetti asked.

'Yes. There's the look of her, the way she howled when she couldn't get her way, and an almost total lack of normal human reactions or feelings.'

'Sounds like half the Questura’ Brunetti said.

It took a second for this to register, but then Vianello laughed so hard he had to stop walking and lean against the wall of a building until he stopped. Feeling not a little proud of the remark, Brunetti made a note to tell Paola and wondered if Vianello would tell Signorina Elettra.

When Vianello had regained control of himself, Brunetti continued down towards the Ca' Rezzonico vaporetto stop. 'You think she could have had anything to do with her aunt's death?'

Vianello's answer was immediate. ‘I don't think so. She started to scream when you asked her about the accounts and threatened to have her fired if she didn't answer. She didn't seem at all troubled when you talked about her aunt.'

Brunetti was of the same opinion, but he was nonetheless glad to have it confirmed by the inspector. 'We'll have to get a list of everyone who worked with him while he was at the school board,' he said, then corrected himself, 'at least who was working there when the payments started.'

'If the records have been computerized’ Vianello said, 'it ought to be easy.'

'I'm surprised she isn't giving you homework to do every night’ Brunetti said with a smile. When Vianello failed to respond, he demanded, 'She isn't, is she?'

They reached the imbarcadero and stepped inside, glad of the shade. Vianello scratched his head. 'Not exactly, sir. But you know she's given me a computer. That is, the Department has given me a computer. And occasionally she suggests I try certain things on it.'

'Would I understand?' Brunetti asked.

Vianello gazed across at Palazzo Grassi, where more long lines of tourists waited in front of another temple to art. ‘I doubt it, sir’ the inspector finally admitted. 'She says you have to learn these things by trying different ways of doing them or different ways of thinking about them. So you really need a computer to work with all the time.' He looked at Brunetti, then dared to add, 'And you have to have a sort of feeling for computers, too.'

Brunetti wanted to defend himself by saying that his children had a computer and his wife used one, but he thought this beneath his dignity and so made no response. He contented himself with asking, 'When can we have the names?'

'At the latest by tomorrow afternoon,' Vianello said. 'I'm not sure I would be able to get them, and Signorina Elettra said she had an appointment this afternoon.'

'Did she say where she had this appointment?'

'No.'

'Then let's leave it until tomorrow,' Brunetti suggested, looking at his watch. There was no purpose to be served by returning to the Questura, and he found himself suddenly exhausted by the events of the day. He wanted nothing more than to go home, have a meal with his family, and think of things other than death and greed. Vianello was more than willing to agree and stepped on to the Number One that was going towards the Lido, leaving his superior to wait for the one that would be along in two minutes to take him to his own home.

But when the vaporetto pulled up at his normal stop, San Silvestro, Brunetti remained on board and got off at the next, Rialto. It was only a few steps back along the canal to the city hall at Ca' Farsetti and then down the calle beside it to the building where the school board had its offices. Brunetti showed his warrant card to the portiere and was told that the main office of the Ufficio di Pubblica Istruzione was on the third floor. Never comfortable in elevators, he chose to take the stairs. On the third floor, a sign directed him to the right and along a narrow corridor, at the end of which stood the glass-doored offices of the school board. Inside he found himself in a large open space, four times the size of his own office. Orange plastic chairs lined the walls on either side of him; facing the door stood a battered wooden desk, and behind the desk sat an equally battered-looking woman, though something told him that her look was the result of choice, rather than chance.

There was no one else in the room, so Brunetti approached her. She could have been any age between thirty and fifty: her make-up was applied with sufficient abandon to disguise the evidence that would have allowed him to make that distinction. Though lipstick had enlarged her mouth, it had also managed to seep into and spread out from the many thin wrinkles under her lower lip, giving her mouth the suggestion of youthful promise at the same time that it gave evidence of years of heavy smoking. Her eyes were dark green, a mysterious emerald, but they glittered so brightly as to suggest either contact lenses or drugs. She had no eyebrows, nothing more than a pair of thin brown lines arching across her forehead in steep curves seemingly chosen at random.

Brunetti smiled as he approached her desk. Her lips moved in return and she asked, 'You the water-cooler man?' Her voice was entirely without inflection or emphasis; it could as easily be coming from a machine as from that exaggerated mouth.

‘I beg your pardon?' he asked.

'Are you the water-cooler man?' her voice played back.

'No. I'm here to speak to the Director.'

'You're not the water-cooler man?'

'No, I'm afraid not.'

He watched as this information was processed somewhere behind those emerald eyes. The fact that her expectation had been confounded appeared momentarily to prove too much for her, forcing her to close her eyes. He noticed that she had two tiny silver studs emerging from her left temple, but he refused to wonder about their origin, still less their purpose.

Her eyes opened. Perhaps she opened them; he was not at all certain. 'Dottor Rossi is in his office,' she said, raising a hand with long green fingernails and waving in the general direction of a door that stood behind her left shoulder.

Brunetti thanked her, decided not to tell her he hoped the water-cooler man would arrive soon, and walked to the door. Beyond it stretched a short corridor, doors to the left and a row of windows on the right giving on to a small inner courtyard, on the opposite side of which were more windows.

Brunetti walked down the hall, reading the names and titles on the signs beside the doors. The offices were silent, apparently abandoned. At the end of the corridor, he turned right: this time there were offices on both sides, though none of them that of the Director.